On this episode of Our American Stories, Chet Leuliette came home from World War II with little money and no high school diploma, but with a determination to build a better life for his family. He sold potato chips, raised his son in a home where money was often scarce, and quietly spent his life helping the people around him.

Former automotive executive Tim Leuliette remembers the father who would give up his own lunch so his son could buy the Weekly Reader, helped a child with birth defects receive treatment at a Shriners hospital, and never believed his own wartime wounds merited a Purple Heart when so many of his fellow soldiers had suffered worse. Chet never made more than $20,000 a year, but to Tim, he was one of the wealthiest men he ever knew.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Richard Muniz was not yet five years old when heavy rain stranded his family overnight at an old railroad station in the mountains of northern New Mexico. When the storm finally cleared, everyone stepped outside beneath a sky crowded with stars to watch for Echo, one of America’s earliest communications satellites.

Richard remembers seeing that tiny point of light move silently across the heavens, while his father explained that some of the starlight above them had begun its journey before Richard was born. In that moment, a little boy’s world suddenly became much bigger, and decades later, the sight of a satellite can still bring him back to that night.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Al Capone became the most famous gangster in America, but Laurence Bergreen argues that his rise would have been almost unimaginable without Prohibition. Born to an Italian immigrant family in Brooklyn, Capone found his opportunity in the vast underground economy created when the government outlawed alcohol, eventually rising to the top of Chicago’s criminal world while cultivating the public image of a businessman and local benefactor.

Bergreen, author of Capone: The Man and the Era, separates the man from the legend, tracing Capone’s rise, his conviction for tax evasion, his imprisonment at Alcatraz, and the neurosyphilis that devastated his health.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in the spring of 1961, McDonald County opened its highway map and discovered that it had simply vanished. The resort towns that depended on summer travelers were nowhere to be found, and what looked like a clerical mistake carried real consequences for the people who lived there. County leaders announced that McDonald County would symbolically secede from Missouri until someone paid attention.

Dwight Pogue was a teenager then, watching his neighbors create a makeshift border patrol, hand out mock visas, and treat the whole effort as both a stand and a celebration. Looking back, he remembers how a small county briefly turned itself into its own territory and how that unlikely season brought the community together in a way no one expected.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1819, as the Missouri Crisis stirred national debate over slavery and westward expansion, a private conversation between John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun became something much larger. Calhoun defended slavery as a necessary institution. Adams left the conversation deeply shaken and newly committed to abolition. This moment would fuel his work after the presidency, where he became a leading voice against the Gag Rule and argued for the freedom of the Amistad captives.

Historians James Traub and Dr. Robert Elder share how a single exchange shaped one of the most important abolitionist legacies in American politics.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, when 16-year-old Hector Boiardi arrived at Ellis Island from Italy in 1914, he couldn't have imagined that his face would one day appear on supermarket shelves across America. After becoming a celebrated chef, he turned his restaurant's most popular takeout meals into one of the country's most recognizable food brands, forever changing the way Americans ate Italian food.

During World War II, Chef Boyardee's factories stopped making food for grocery stores and began producing military rations around the clock, making his company one of the largest suppliers of meals to American and Allied troops. Greg Hengler shares the remarkable story of the real man behind one of America's most familiar brands.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, Rudyard Kipling became one of the most famous writers of his age, giving the world The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, “Gunga Din,” and “If.” In 1907, he became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. But behind that success was a life marked by an abusive childhood, controversy, and devastating loss.

The History Guy shares the story of Kipling’s remarkable rise from colonial India to literary fame, the years he spent writing in Vermont, and the deaths of two of his three children, including his son John during World War I.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, America entered World War I late, but its arrival helped change the course of the conflict. By the fall of 1918, more than a million American soldiers were fighting through the Argonne Forest as Allied forces pushed Germany toward collapse. On November 11, the guns finally fell silent. The United States and its allies had won the Great War, but deciding what should come next would prove far more difficult.

As part of our ongoing Story of Us—Story of America series, Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, shares the story of America’s victory in World War I and the struggle over the peace that followed.

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On this episode of Our American Stories, in 2017, Rhode Island grower Joe Jutras set a world record with a green squash weighing 2,118 pounds, earning a place among the largest fruits and vegetables ever grown. Reaching that milestone took years of experimenting with soil science and meticulous care from planting to harvest.

Joe explains how patience, timing, and an understanding of growth cycles can turn an ordinary garden into a contender for the world’s biggest fruit.

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